JeffM wrote:
IE is a complete botch.
Agreed, but that doesn't stop a lot of noobs from using it . . . mostly because it comes with their machines. I think the EU has the best approach.
Pros know that after they have built a compliant page that looks fine in all other browsers they have to do specific tests on their pages to see how they look in IE6/7/8.
While I am not a pro, I'm building a web site for my brother-in-law's real estate business. I have a Windows VM within my Linux, so I have IE(8) just so I can check how my pages render. I check them for Chrome, Opera, and IE8 (I write them using FF). I probably should check them in IE6 and 7 too, but my brother-in-law uses IE7 (well . . . AOL's version of IE7, which is another story . . . I'm more of an AOL basher than I am a Micro$oft basher) and I have him check the view-ability of pages on his machine before I "release" them.
Unfortunately, most who view his web site are using IE7, so I have to make my code "accommodate" IE7. I do have the "Best Viewed with the Firefox Browser" caution on his site, but that hasn't changed the traffic pattern.
*Smart* pros give a price for a compliant site and a separate price beyond that to make it look right in IE (actually, a separate price for *each version* of IE).
There was an interesting twist to this for my brother-in-law's real estate business. He was being inundated with marketing emails from web development companies offering to "design" a web page for his business. Most of his colleagues had retained one or another.
He asked me for advice on this, so I checked some of the sites his colleagues had (and had built by what I thought were scammers.) NONE of the sites rendered without substantial display issues in IE . . . much as I suspected. Turns out these "pros" (not) were doing it for a flat fee and NOT checking the rendering in IE. From my vantage point, since I knew most of the customers were viewing these pages in IE, they were seeing something that, while maybe W3C standards compliant (and real estate customers don't know what that means, much less care about it), looked very unprofessional.
So that's why I agreed to do a web site for him (without charge, BTW).
After the google.cn/IE6 fiasco, government agencies in France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand advised their residents to stop using *all* versions of IE. U.S. CERT advised that back in 2004.
As I said, I think the EU, and Australia and NZ, have the right approach. Interestingly though, the governments of those countries require their employees to use IE, while they recommend not to use it for their residents . . . what's wrong with that picture?
I think we're in basic agreement, but you apparently are a strong M$ basher (I am a little too, but I don't get my shorts so twisted . . . I just switched to Linux over it and now am glad I left Windows . . . I get my shorts more twisted over AOL).
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